163 Responses

One of the photos turned out to be from a French artist's book and wasn't even of the 'supermoon'. I wonder how much Herald staff time was wasted sorting out the mess.

Great Petra. I was hoping you would weigh in. It got to the stage where I kind of thought 'sort your shit out!', and then briefly 'shame they removed them' to finally 'well, they obviously have no intention of engaging, so why should I give up my unpaid time and energy banging my head against that particular wall?'

I'm glad I sent a shot across the bow, but there was a reason I chose the title of this post.

The 'moon', as it turns out, is just as inaccessible and inscrutable as ever, no matter how much closer it might seem.

On Monday I did a quick straw poll of friends who work as journalists, and none of their workplaces had a policy about using images from social media, and none of them could recall covering the topic in the Grad Dip Journalism.

And THIS is the problem.

I make mention of the lack of an ethical and professional framework around the use of social media content in nearly every talk I give on this area, including one to Annie Goldson's students last month. It never seems to improve.

I actually asked them, admittedly via open twitter, but reasonably nicely, what the Herald policy was on using photos off social media.

It's not just photos, it's the ethics of delving into kids' profiles. I wrote about the NZ media's disgraceful speculation around the disappearance of Marie Davis in 2008.

Things were different in the case of another tragic loss of a young life – that of Christ-church 15-year-old Marie Davis. TV news bulletins and newspapers treated Bebo – where Marie clearly had a lively presence – as fodder for speculation.

The majority latched on to a similarity between the name of one of her profiles, “towards darkness”, and Towards Darkness, a new film about the kidnapping of a young photographer in Colombia. What were they implying? A staged disappearance? At any rate, none of them went so far as to check whether the film had ever screened here. It hadn’t – indeed, at the time of Marie’s disappearance, it had had exactly five cinematic screenings, all in the United States. She couldn’t have seen it.

Sadly, it was discovered that Marie Davis had been raped and murdered by a man known to the family. No one ever said sorry for abusing the contents of her Bebo page to suggest she'd staged her disappearance.

The below photo of mine was used by many NZ media organisations including tvnz website, nz herald etc for their articles on Auckland port strikes… they've got that photo from the Auckland's wikipedia page but almost no one mentioned my authorship :( I just didn't know what to do

Send them all an invoice. Seriously, if it's been on there long enough, and has ended up in print, you're entitled to be paid. The same is true for online of course, but they can then easily remove it, and claim it was a mistake.

Just as a matter of interest, does everyone know about the Google Image search function that allows you to 'Find similar'? It was a recently new discovery to me, thank to Petra and Jonathan.

If you click on the camera icon under image search, and enter one of your photos, Google will search via features and meta tags for similar images.

It can become a bit obsessive. For example, I'm wondering whether to send a cease and desist to some guy called Alex (no relation to our friend here) on Facebook who is using my clouds photo as his cover shot.

The cheek of it!!!

Although he isn't profiting from it, so I'll probably let it go, just this one time.

The below photo of mine was used by many NZ media organisations including tvnz website, nz herald etc for their articles on Auckland port strikes… they’ve got that photo from the Auckland’s wikipedia page but almost no one mentioned my authorship :( I just didn’t know what to do

Does Wikipedia's policy of anonymous comtributions preclude signing pictures, like with an overlay or watermark plainly visible near the edge of field? Assuming you'd been able to do so, if an unauthorised end user had cropped your signature, that would seem to be clear proof of underhand intent

To be fair, Alex, you did make it hard for them to acknowledge your authorship by not, so far as I can see, letting anyone know your real name. So the only condition they needed to meet under the stated licence -- attribution -- was arguably not possible.

To be fairer, Russ, if you click on that username it takes you to the profile of partyzane which reads:Alexander Efimov (partyzane). DOB 5 October, 1978. Student, photographer. New Zealand

I make mention of the lack of an ethical and professional framework around the use of social media content in nearly every talk I give on this area, including one to Annie Goldson’s students last month. It never seems to improve.

Cases like this one really make me despair - according to Wikipedia, you've licensed the photo under a CC-BY Creative Commons license. They don't have to pay or get explicit permission from the photographer of something licensed CC-BY, they only have to acknowledge who took the photo, and somehow that's still too hard for them to manage?

Would Peter Parker have to turn to a life of crime if he couldn't sell his Spiderman pics to The Daily Bugle?

Recently I did a collaged cover for an e-book for a friend, who diligently sought out the original pulp artists (or their estates) for their approval, one was completely happy about their element's use, another spat the dummy - fair enough, we didn't use that bit...

Ah, but a Creative Commons license doesn't preclude a photographer negotiating other licenses for organisations to use the same photograph under different conditions.

I have several photos on Flickr under an Attribution-Non Commercial license. I can (and sometimes do) still negotiate an entirely separate license for a specific magazine or commercial website to use one of those photos. Creative Commons doesn't replace copyright or any other rights held by the author, it just says "here's the boilerplate license for anyone who wants to republish or reuse this work, if you want to use this work under these terms then you don't have to check with me first".

Creative Commons doesn’t replace copyright or any other rights held by the author, it just says “here’s the boilerplate license for anyone who wants to republish or reuse this work, if you want to use this work under these terms then you don’t have to check with me first”.

Yeah, but it’s not an NC licence. Just attribution. So those are the terms on which Alex has released the image. News media can't be faulted for using the image without seeking permission, just for not attributing.

By using a CC-BY image without attributing it to Alex, those organisations aren't covered by the license. According to the Creative Commons FAQ:

A CC license terminates automatically upon a violation of its conditions. For example, if a user of a work distributed under a Creative Commons license fails to attribute the creator as required, then the user no longer has the right to continue using the work and may be liable for copyright infringement. The license terminates with respect to the user who violated the license, but it remains in effect for all other users so long as they are in compliance.

If you adopt a Creative Commons license and a user violates the license conditions, you have options for addressing the situation, from contacting the person and asking them to rectify the situation to consulting a lawyer to act on your behalf.

Of course, I don't expect most NZ journalists have a very clear understanding of how Creative Commons works. Again, education is the answer.

I believe that has been my stance since before the infamous copyright thread.And Kim Dotcom is fine by me, certainly more likeable than most with his wealth which, by the way, wasn't "earned" by shitting on the workers.